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A chilly camper circled by mosquitoes disturbing an animal come to drink

Why camp 50 yards from water

It’s the general sage backcountry camping advice - don’t camp right on the edge of water, but so often people are tempted to camp right on the edge. But there are excellent reasons not to: there are more bugs, it gets much colder and damper overnight, and you’re likely to disturb animals coming for a drink which is not good for your sleep, your camp, or good for them. Instead, camp 50 yards, or more, away, and go watch the sunset by the edge of the lake - preferably with a dip.…It’s the general sage backcountry camping advice - don’t camp right on the edge of water, but so often people are tempted to camp right on the edge. But there are excellent reasons not to: there are more bugs, it gets much colder and damper overnight, and you’re likely to disturb animals coming for a drink which is not good for your sleep, your camp, or good for them. Instead, camp 50 yards, or more, away, and go watch the sunset by the edge of the lake - preferably with a dip.

28 Jan 2014

Lenticular clouds

Make spectacular photos like these, these, or this, but generally mean high winds high up. Look out.…

27 Jan 2014

Framing

26 Jan 2014

The content is the interface

Sam Moreau, User Experience Director at Microsoft. Just one small example. Had a few questions about this so thought I’d add another simple example. Imagine you want to change your phone number on a service. Rather than display the phone number and have an option in a menu to edit and then a separate edit screen, the phone number itself can be the route to editing. You simply display the current number - clean, no junk. Mousing over it or clicking on it allows you to edit it directly. You remove the need for additional menus, text, instructions, and chrome. The content itself becomes the interface.…Sam Moreau, User Experience Director at Microsoft. Just one small example. Had a few questions about this so thought I’d add another simple example. Imagine you want to change your phone number on a service. Rather than display the phone number and have an option in a menu to edit and then a separate edit screen, the phone number itself can be the route to editing. You simply display the current number - clean, no junk. Mousing over it or clicking on it allows you to edit it directly. You remove the need for additional menus, text, instructions, and chrome. The content itself becomes the interface.

26 Jan 2014

Tie a sheet bend

Of course an animated gif would illustrate this better. I have been told that sheet bends are famous particular for linking two ropes of different sizes together. Also see, reef knot and clove hitch…

25 Jan 2014

Hyperbolic discounting

We’re not very consistent at estimating the future value of something and have a bias, perhaps motivated by survival, towards overvaluing nearer outcomes at the expense of later ones.…

24 Jan 2014

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